Thoughtful adventures in the operating system

Command line to xclipboard

Update: Script has been updated to add pipe support. Thanks to Nathan who allowed me to use his improvements.

It’s really something to be learning Linux. The more I learn about Linux the more I learn it’s about manipulating letters and numbers (well, this is more programming than anything but Linux is a lot about that). Bash I’m discovering is great; I’m just getting into it and now have made things a good deal easier by learning how to copy and paste text from the command line via the Xorg server clipboard. Here is a couple commands that can do it with examples, following them are a couple bash scripts that make this easy as can beasy.

The Programs

xsel and xclip are command line programs that can redirect the contents of the Xorg server clipboard. The Xorg server has two clipboards: the common right-click > Copy, and one for the middle-mouse click. For those that don’t know of it yet, the middle-click clipboard allows quick copy and pasting without having to enter a menu or using Ctrl + v. Anytime you select text on the Xorg server there is a separate register that records this text, then clicking the middle-mouse button (sometimes called the mouse button three [usually done by clicking down the scroll wheel] will paste the text. The Xorg server defines the the middle-click clipboard as primary and the right-click clipboard as secondary.

xclip

Here are the basics of using xclip. xclip, I prefer over xsel because I have found that xsel can have problems pasting to java apps.

xclip can be used in a variety of ways. First, for example, it can be piped to:

echo "hi" | xclip -selection clipboard

This will copy to the standard clipboard. For abbreviation, you can use c instead of clipboard. You can specify primary or p here too to copy to the middle-mouse button, but isn’t necessary as this is the default for xclip.

echo "hello" | xclip

To direct a file to xclip the -in or -out options are needed:

xclip -in -selection c <filename>
xclip -out -selection c <filename>

Which will respectively put a file into the clipboard, and write to a file from the clipboard contents.

To make the process quicker, I’ve created a couple scripts to automate the tasks called cb-in and cb-out and can be used like a standard command:

Welcome

Here is a gathering place to share common bits of Linux knowledge. Learning with the operating system is a hobby for me. I enjoy getting along with people and being part of something everyone can contribute to. Comments, tips all liked.

If desired you can learn more about me or view the number of scripts I've wrote.